What does King Tut have to do with energy management? Just ask the City of Dallas.

Exterior of the Dallas Museum of Art Entrance on Flora Street.
The Dallas Museum of Art has decreased its energy usage by 45% over five years — 15% more than the original goal — for a savings of more than $5 million. This impressive retrofit won an EBie award in the “Reformed Gas Guzzler” category from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Municipal clients often contact Schneider Electric seeking help to meet a new regulatory mandate around energy efficiency, but the conversation quickly expands to how we can help them tackle other priorities. The city of Dallas is a perfect example of how an energy management partnership helped achieve a community’s key priority.

In 2007, the state of Texas mandated cities to reduce energy use in public buildings by 5% a year over a six-year period. Dallas leaders quickly identified the city’s energy-intensive museum as one of the first buildings in this energy conservation program and put it on the fast track in preparation for an exciting exhibition opportunity at the Dallas Museum of Art: the internationally acclaimed Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.

But before the contract could be signed, King Tut tour organizers needed some guarantees. Specifically, the museum had to confirm it could maintain a temperature and humidity constant within just 3% of variance in the galleries where the Egyptian antiquities would be on view.

Fortunately, the energy management partnership of Dallas and Schneider allowed the city to offer the King Tut exhibition the royal treatment it required, complete with temperature and humidity data and a history to show that the building could maintain those exacting standards.

Not only did the new energy partnership help the museum win a spot on the King Tut tour, but it also decreased its energy usage 45% over five years—15% more than the original goal—for a savings of more than $5 million.